Reinventing Our Lives at 40

humor

Hello again, and please forgive us our recent absence. We’ve taken a small summer hiatus – not because we’ve actually been on vacation, but because for a period of time there we didn’t have many nice things to say about farming, and we didn’t want our space here to sound whiny and negative. We’re genuinely thrilled to be farming, even when we aren’t.

One of early summer’s low points.

It’s been just under one year since we found Quiet Farm, and what a year it’s been. There have been highs and lows and successes and failures. And now that we’re one year wiser and can officially call ourselves farmers, we’re working hard on learning from our experiences. We always say that we’re allowed to make as many mistakes as we want, but we have to make different mistakes. If we make the same mistakes over and over, then we obviously haven’t learned anything.

The first time we walked into our old house, the one we sold last year, we fell hard for the woodburning stove and the built-in bookshelves. We don’t have a woodburning stove here at Quiet Farm – hell, we don’t even have a furnace – but we have the opportunity to make our own custom built-in bookshelves. And so we did.

It is with regret that we inform you that you are no longer a candidate for the location of Quiet Farm. Although we visited you with highest hopes, we found that our expectations did not coincide with reality.

Praying Mantis

Fly Agaric Mushroom (poisonous!)

It goes without saying, Oregon, that your flora and fauna are simply exceptional. Just look at these photos! Coming from our dry, stark, high-plains desert, we were stunned by the sheer life found everywhere in this damp climate: on fallen logs, under chestnut leaves, buried in cranberry bogs.

Pacific Tree Frog

Still Life with Mushrooms

And the water! All the free water, everywhere! Just falling from the sky! Oh look, it’s still raining! Truly, it’s a miracle, and it means you can grow pretty much anything here. But we also found that farming in the pouring rain wasn’t as much fun as we’d hoped. Slogging through inches of sloppy mud while trying to dig out a stuck tractor or get feed to hungry animals sounds adventurous, but we’re afraid it would just become rather tedious.

Rough-Skinned Newt (its underside is bright orange!)

Cascades Frog

(While we’re on the topic of growing things, Oregon, we’d like to talk about “medicinal substances,” if you get our meaning. As a state, it seemed to us that you’ve embraced the recreational drug lifestyle just a touch too enthusiastically for our comfort, and that’s saying something, considering we hail from Colorado.)

Woolly Bear Caterpillar

Angel Mushroom (unconfirmed ID)

This is a tough letter for us to write, Oregon, because we were pretty much ready to set up shop and get Quiet Farm up and running. But outside of Portland or possibly Eugene, we don’t feel confident that the community can support the type of business we want to start. And unfortunately, we can’t afford any property near Portland or Eugene. Apparently it’s all being snatched up by escaping Californians.

Red-Veined Meadowhawk

Please know, Oregon, that you’re more than welcome to reapply as a potential Quiet Farm location at any time. We’ll just need to see a dramatic reduction in your extortionate property prices as well as a corresponding reduction in your precipitation rates. Oh, and lay off the weed for a bit, please. There’s work to be done.

We started the year learning about macadamias in New Zealand, so it’s only fitting that we should close it out harvesting chestnuts in Oregon. Prior to marrying an Englishman, I had never eaten a fresh chestnut – only candied, at culinary school in France – but they’ve become part of our fall traditions, as they were for him in childhood. And now that I’ve harvested them myself, I truly have a newfound appreciation for their exorbitant price. These things are little monsters.

The trees in the grove we harvested are between fifteen and twenty years old.

Chestnut trees are grown across much of the world; chestnuts themselves are important food crops in Asia and Europe. Chestnuts were also hugely valuable to native Americans and early settlers; the fruit is primarily carbohydrates, has more starch by weight than potatoes and contains enough vitamin C to prevent scurvy. In the early 1900s, however, the Bronx Zoo imported Asian chestnut trees for their botanical collection and inadvertently introduced chestnut blight to North America. Within forty years, the blight wiped out nearly every single one of the forty billion chestnut trees in America, with only a few small isolated stands now remaining across the country.

Usually you’ll find three chestnuts in the burr, but it depends on the species.

The actual chestnuts are contained in a burr, or hull, which is exactly like a tiny, angry porcupine. When the chestnuts are ripe, the chocolate-colored burrs fall to the ground; unlike other fruits or nuts, chestnuts are never harvested directly from the tree.

Ripe burrs split open, as on the left.

The burrs split open on their own, further indicating ripeness; this is primarily due to soil humidity, as chestnut trees prefer more humid climates. Sometimes unripe (green) burrs will also fall, and if they haven’t opened they should be left to ripen further.

Dry leaves and empty burrs after harvesting.

Things to know when harvesting chestnuts: you’ll need gloves. Kevlar gloves, to be precise, and yes, that is the material used for bulletproof vests. These things look relatively harmless but are truly vicious, and good gloves are mandatory. And it will take you ages to harvest these; the little burrs love to hide in the huge piles of dry leaves that have also fallen from the tree. They’re like adorable, spiky landmines, and now I know personally why they’re criminally expensive: the pain level is extraordinarily high. (I’m almost certain they were used as extras in this film.)

Looks harmless. Isn’t.

These edible chestnuts aren’t to be confused with horse chestnuts, which are mildly toxic to humans, or water chestnuts, which are grown aquatically and used in Asian cuisine. Attempts have been made since the 1930s to hybridize the American and Asian chestnut trees, in order to create a native species resistant to blight, but it hasn’t as yet been hugely successful. (On a related note, we’re about to suffer another major loss of trees, as the emerald ash borer – also imported from Asia, on shipping pallets this time – continues its trail of destruction across America. Colorado alone is projected to lose more than two million trees.)

It took forever to harvest a three-gallon bucket!

Chestnuts are used in savory and sweet preparations all over France and Italy; as with cranberries, they’re commonly seen in holiday recipes because their harvest time coincides perfectly. And in wintertime in cities like London or New York or Paris, you’ll often find street vendors roasting chestnuts over repurposed fifty-gallon oil drums.

To roast fresh chestnuts at home, carefully cut an ‘X’ into the flat side of each nut. Use sturdy kitchen shears to do this and be very, very careful; the nuts are slippery and unwieldy. Place on a baking sheet and broil until you hear the first explosion, about ten minutes depending on the quantity and your broiler temperature; be patient and wait until the second explosion, which indicates that all of them should be cooked through. Open the oven carefully and quickly lay a kitchen towel over the entire tray as more explosions are likely to follow. Let cool until you can safely handle them, then peel and dip each nut into coarse salt and enjoy. (Sorry about your oven; you’ll probably need to clean up the shrapnel once it’s cooled down. And a pro tip: it’s not a great idea to roast chestnuts in someone else’s oven, unless you’re also willing to clean it.)

Although chestnuts seem to thwart you at every turn, the reward is well worth the potential injury. Roasted chestnuts pair perfectly with a wee snifter of bourbon and are even better if enjoyed in front of a roaring fire. Take pleasure in the simple things, friends, and clean up the oven later.

What’s more fun when traveling than searching out funny signs? (As always, this is gentle humor – no disrespect or mockery is intended.)

Dear New Zealand: this could perhaps be rephrased.

Maybe try it in a fourth language?

If only they came together in one handy product.

A helpful tip on a menu in India. Don’t talk to strangers, ever.

Those crazy tourists in Vietnam! They always want to recycle!

And right next to the recycling bins shown above, you’ll find this.

(As with India, this is what Vietnam actually looks like. Pretty sure it’s not just the tourists’ fault.)

What?

Notice #9…this sign was in a temple. So definitely watch out for muggers there. Muggers love temples.

Again, temples are very dangerous places.

Funniest thing about these two signs? We were actually very politely mugged in a temple in Vietnam. A “monk” approached us and escorted us on a “secret” tour to a “hidden” altar not open to “regular” tourists (all in broken English, obviously). We were given an “honored blessing,” at which point he demanded 200,000 Vietnamese dong, or about $9. We handed him 100,000 and scampered, fully aware that we really didn’t have to pay him anything. But he was one of the few people in Vietnam who was actually (fake) nice to us, and isn’t it bad karma to skip out on a blessing? So really, please watch out for muggers in temples. We’re pretty sure he wasn’t even a monk.